From Sliced Bread to Gas Prices, Obama Takes Stump Speech Off Script

MIAMI — President Obama is savoring what is likely to be the last intensive political campaign of his life, and his speeches have been running so long that 30 minutes were tacked onto his official schedule Thursday to compensate.

With every rally, Mr. Obama adds another aside to a stump speech touting his record, condemning Donald J. Trump and praising Hillary Clinton. And his goodbye waves at the end of the speeches, as crowds send him off with cheers, have become longer and longer.

During a raucous rally at Florida International University Arena on Thursday morning, for instance, Mr. Obama noted that Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida running for re-election, had called Mr. Trump a con man and said on Twitter that “friends don’t let friends vote for con artists.”

Mr. Rubio had nonetheless voted for Mr. Trump, the president noted.

“Obviously, he did not have good enough friends,” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Rubio.

In another lengthy riff, Mr. Obama excoriated Republicans for voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, more than 60 times but never having a true alternative.

“Let me just make another aside,” he said. “I’m running long, but,” and the audience cheered him on. He described watching a recent news conference in which Republicans were asked to describe details of their plan to replace the health law.

“You watch the press conference and you realize, they got no plan,” he said. “It’s not like, they don’t even have a pretense of a plan. They don’t even have a semblance of a plan. Not even a hint of a plan. Not even a remote — not even a — there’s no plan. Nothing, zero, nada. You can’t just be against something. You gotta be for something.”

At another point in his speech, when he normally said that Mr. Trump had altered what had been deemed acceptable rhetoric in presidential campaigns, Mr. Obama embellished his comments by making up a word.

“The problem is that he has said so much stuff that our culture and our media has just gotten so reality TV-ized,” he said. “I know that’s not a word. But you get my drift. It becomes normal when somebody just says wacky stuff.”

Mr. Obama told the crowd of about 4,500 people, who reflected the diversity of South Florida, that he could understand why many would want to ignore the election. “Sometimes you just want to focus on the Cubs winning the World Series,” he said.

Mr. Obama then said he had been watching TV the previous night when someone pointed out that sliced bread had not been invented the last time the Cubs had won a World Series title.

“So this is actually for Cubs fans the greatest thing since sliced bread,” Mr. Obama said.

Again diverging from his stump speech, he said that while driving through North Carolina on Wednesday, he had noticed that gas was selling for $1.99 per gallon.

“I think in 2008, I think they were predicting that if Obama got elected, gas would be $6,” Mr. Obama said. “So sometimes it’s useful to check the tape. See what they said before. It turns out what they said was wrong. So what that means is what they’re saying now is probably also wrong.”

He paused.

“I just wanted to give that little detour. Yeah. Thanks, Obama,” he said, and the crowd roared.

At every event, teleprompters are set up beside a lectern with the presidential seal on its front. But Mr. Obama only occasionally seems to glance at the monitors nowadays, having delivered this stump speech again and again over the past month. He now peppers his criticisms of Republicans with a line — “Come on, man!” — that his audience knows is coming and screams in response when he uses.

“I know I’ve gone on too long,” Mr. Obama said near the end of his speech here. “My staff is going to talk to me about it.”